Bette Midler Quotes

Success is measured by the memories you create.

But I try not to become preoccupied with that because with whatever direction I follow, with whatever advice I've followed or not followed, It's landed me in New York, in a very beautiful hotel, talking to people about something that I love. So I ain't that far off.

My life is so much better than I thought it was going to be.

As I've moved along - not only my life, but my career and things like that - you look at yourself and start going, 'Oh, man, are you still doing what you set out to do? Are the ideals you had still the same?' Sometimes you measure up and sometimes you don't.

How one can live without being able to judge oneself, criticize what one has accomplished, and still enjoy what one does, is unimaginable to me.

When you were born, you cried and everybody else was happy. The only question that matters is this - when you die, will you be happy when everybody else is crying?

Everyone takes pause at 40. It's the age you have to assess everything in your life. It's the fictitious marker that's always coming up when you're young. The world really does look at you to kind of have it together by 40, and be successful by 40. Whatever success means.

The goal isn't to be successful; it's to be happy. And so it doesn't matter if I'm doing things in New York or teaching high school or I drop it altogether and sell coffee. The goal is to be happy, and people and relationships are what makes you happy.

I was looking for something to make me happy, and once I realised what I actually had, then I found success.

I'm pleased with my life, with the journey.

The world's treated me awfully well, and I guess it's crept into my work.

I can be very serious, but if I'm being honest, I'm very happy with the way my life has turned out.

You reach a point at which you have to view your life through the things you've spent so much time doing. The alternative is a perilous feeling of waste.

Those of us who have come to years of discretion and more, must often take to retrospect, and seek to appraise the outcome of our lives.

When you reach my age, you realize you couldn't have done things very much better or much worse than you did them in the first place.

I try to be self-analytical, both to outline the mistakes I made in my life and try to explain why I did, and the things that on balance I did pretty well on.

When ambition ends, happiness begins.

Anything you're good at contributes to happiness.

Real success is finding you lifework in the work that you love.

Happiness for me is getting to write about the most important things I know.

When I don't plumb the depths or the opportunities of each day, I don't have joy.

I have amazing kids, an amazing husband, a fabulous career, wonderful parents. If I had to go through some rough spots to get to this amazing place, so be it.

I think I value things more correctly. I hope I look at my life in a way that makes sense.

At the end of our lives we all ask, 'Did I live? Did I love? Did I matter?'

I think I have handled things pretty well last year and this. What I have to do now is try do it even better.